The Writing Prompt Boot Camp

Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 195

For this week’s prompt, write a sudden poem. The poem could be about something that suddenly happens. Or it could be just whatever words suddenly spring from you. Or… I’ll let you decide what a sudden poem means for you.

Here’s my attempt:

“Deadline”

He digs his fingers deeper into his forehead
than they’ve ever dug before. He reclines until
he’s facing the ceiling. He stares at the ceiling,
exhales. Then, inhales. The world completely silent
waits. And waits. And waits until the engine ignites
and his fingers type faster and faster as if
the words (given the chance) might try sneaking away.

A fist, no, a knee in my back, a hock-
joint to the jaw. The puppy’s leaped on top
of bed with us asleep. Knock and snuggle
cold nose in the face. Mack truck of comfort.
I grab and hold. No slack. But then, a sigh,
she licks my finger, tries to creep inside
the sheets, the heap of pillow; hide herself
in a slim crack between my hands and voice.

What nightmare had her frantic? Now lying
on my feet, she breathes deeply, ribs a harp
of dog-lullaby. Who’d guess such bad dreams
in a pup – what mind-sight we think reserved
for humans? What terror teethes there?
I touch her chest. Her heart beats dream.

I carry a pocket-sized notebook
for the times when a sound or an image
hits me over the head, when a snippet
of conversation between two women
waiting for the train amuses or intrigues me,
when I startle a deer at the edge of the wood
on my morning walk, and she startles me, and
we stare at each other, her black eyes to my blue;
when the morning is so crisp, the evening so serene,
the sunset so full of clouds and creation,
that I must get it all down. So many times
I have witnessed something striking and thought,
if I only had my camera. This pen, these small pages
are my snapshots, doing their best to snatch
a sudden moment out of the world, one that lasts
only as a memory, or as words on a page.

The wind picked up and blew sandy dust and leaves
Over the land that had been waiting for a storm.
The trees swirled round in honor of the static emissions.
The air changed to ozone and refreshed the lungs.

The dark clouds pushed fast and rushed into the languid
Heat of the previous climate,
The wheat bent down in the field and the rain
Began to pelt its curves with huge drops.

Pushed by the wind, a late crow crossed the road’s gap,
And fell into the poplar tree, giving up a feather.

The weather man is laughing. Montana
has snow. After a dry tightwad summer,
a forty-fifty degree swoop, and Fall connects,
knocks the socks off of summer smashes that pinata all to hell.
Snow falls like charms and candy. And we, manic oddities, applaud.
We mysteries; we crust-where-the-pan-met-the-lasagna lovers;
pent-up, penny-wise, pound-downright-silly
performers of nothing important, applaud.
It doesn’t take much. Rain. A few red maples. In the breeze
willows, hanging, wave; grasses, standing, rustle.
Leaves. Sheaths. Chill. And Wham! the brittle,
unbearable, beautiful Fall is piercing
our summer-fever balloon, and we explode
into mending, laughing like the weatherman.

It happened all of a sudden.
He was a stranger
just stumbling down the street.
His bumping into me
seemed avoidable on the mostly empty sidewalk.
Yet somehow our collision occurred.
That in and of itself wasn’t the strange
part, but his teeth sinking into
my shoulder seemed quite peculiar.
As I attempted to stop the blood flow
he continued on.
It all happened so fast.
My eyes began to fog over and
I had the strangest craving for
brains.
Of course that would mean he
was a
zombie and therefore
I am now on my way to being
a zombie.
Since that is
impossible…

I shout at you, you shout at me.
If we had thought bubbles
they would be black clouds
with the wrong sort of pooh
and no honey bees.
I cannot believe how it is possible
to hate you so much.
My blood pressure is up
and I am shaking with furious
resentment.
How dare you argue with me?
But you are you and I am me.
And then I say something
so completely bonkers
it makes the unspoken thought about
the wrong sort of pooh clouds
seem pedestrian.
And we are laughing
and I can’t remember why we were shouting
and neither can you
and the storm is over.

I’m sitting by a large window,
reflections staring back
through the reds and browns
and golds fluttering
just beyond melancholy,
their outlines darkening
in the cold fading light
of an October moon,
a sliver of which curls
itself like a cat in my lap

Each page is white space interrupted
by brief dark lines of type –
a trellis or a scaffold; thin frame
for the eye to climb down, word by word.
An iron grate of filigree abruptly
closed. Inside, a sudden spill of light
through leaves – Two kittens glimpsed –
just an instant snapshot, without
the ballet of their leaps – A snug tuffet
of moss in a doorpost corner –
whose door? – The sky blank polo-
mallet white on foggy mornings
without a horse’s sudden
whinny from the paddock.
What’s the poet’s role in all this?
To keep the reader out?
A mask pulled unexpectedly
over the face? He never cast his
shadow on the page.

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